(London) Prince Harry has accused the British royal family of withholding information from him about telephone tapping carried out by British tabloids, in a statement released on Tuesday as part of the legal proceedings he has brought against the publisher of the DailyMail.
The youngest son of King Charles III attended a hearing at the High Court in London for the second day in a row on Tuesday in the multi-celebrity lawsuit against the Associated Newspaper (ANL), accused of gathering information in a manner illegal.
In his witness statement signed on February 24 and which AFP was able to consult, Harry evokes his “difficult relationship with the press” since the death of his mother Diana, but explains that “for a member of the institution, politics was ‘never complain, never explain’.
He says the royal family dissuaded him from suing the press because “it could open a Pandora’s box.”
“There is no doubt that the institution [royale] hid information about phone hacking from me for a long time, and it only became clear in recent years when I filed my own complaint. »
Harry, who only travels to the UK exceptionally, made a surprise visit to London to attend the hearing at which ANL is trying to defeat the lawsuits brought by the king’s son, but also singer Elton John or the actress Liz Hurley.
The six plaintiffs accuse ANL of employing detectives to wiretap them.
The group refuted “totally and without ambiguity these grotesque defamations” which seek according to him to “drag the titles of the Email in the wiretapping scandal concerning 30-year-old articles”.
The British tabloid press was shaken about ten years ago by several scandals of illegal wiretapping practiced from the beginning of the 2000s.
Harry’s visit to the UK comes just over a month before the king’s coronation on May 6. Exiled to the United States after crashing out of the monarchy in 2020, Harry and his wife Meghan have been invited to the ceremony, but have not yet publicly announced whether they will honor the invitation.
After a documentary aired on Netflix in December, Harry released his controversial memoir entitled Spare in which he details the breakdown of his relationship with his father and his brother William.